"How you doing, Daisy?" Hawke turned back to look at Merrill, huddled on her pony under so many blankets she resembled more a riding boulder than a person.
"I'm alright." The feeble response came from somewhere in the depths of the fabric. Hawke slowed her pony until she and Merrill were abreast again.
"Are you sure?" she asked. "I'm starting to worry it's not really you under there." The boulder gave a shudder, and Merrill pushed blankets and hoods back to show her face, her short black hair on end, and tufting up around the points of her ears. Hawke brushed off an urge to smooth it down for her.
"It's me," she said.
"Sorry about the weather," Hawke said. "That's Ferelden." The sleet that had been falling the last hour seemed to briefly intensify, as if to put force behind Hawke's words. The road seemed as much puddle as mud, and at times disappeared entirely under a lake of brown, which was to be expected after three straight days of on-and-off precipitation.
"When it got cold in Kirkwall, it was always dry cold," Merrill remarked, hugging her blankets around her. "And I don't remember it getting this cold in the rest of the Free Marches."
"Too far north, I guess," Hawke said. They clopped along in silence, and Hawke nibbled on her lower lip. Bringing Merrill with her after leaving Kirkwall had felt like a decision so obvious it was barely a decision. With the Sabrae gone and Kirkwall in flames, Hawke couldn't see what was left there—certainly not for her, and not likely for Merrill either. But the journey to Ferelden had been anything but smooth, and it was only when they got back into the country Hawke was forced to admit she had no real plan, besides heading to Denerim. Lothering was still a Blighted wasteland, and she had no family to speak of—whomever the Hawkes had been when her father left Ferelden for Kirkwall, she had no idea who or where they were now, or if they had any interest in the beleaguered offspring of their mage connection.
Hawke had begun to think it had been selfishness, not logic, that spurred her to drag Merrill to Ferelden with her.
"I keep hoping we'll come around a corner and there'll be a quaint little inn with a fire going and food on the table," she said.
"I'm not so sure about that," Merrill replied.
You should stop, insisted a voice in Hawke's head. Stop and do what? she asked it irritably. Sit in the sleet? Maybe Merrill could make them a barrier to keep it off them until it passed, but how long would that take? And Merrill was tired too—it wasn't fair to expect her to handle everything with magic. It was Hawke's fault though, wasn't it? That Merrill was cold and wet and aimless, stuck in a foreign country, on horseback for days, and she'd left her favorite ring behind in Kirkwall, which was really, in the big picture, Hawke's fault as well.
"Hey, look at that…the sleet's stopped," Hawke said, the second it was possible to say so.
"Well that's something, isn't it?" Merrill was such a good sport. Merrill shouldn't have to be a good sport.
It was the sleet, putting these thoughts in Hawke's head. Not that blaming herself was outside the ordinary, but the thoughts had been going around in an increasingly vicious cycle for the last three days and it was starting to feel like she'd stumbled into an errant hex.
"Are you homesick?" It was one of the questions Hawke had not yet dared to ask, because she was too afraid of the answer, but now it tumbled into the quiet like it could no longer be restrained. She'd walk Merrill all the way back to the docks if she wanted, but the idea of setting foot back in Kirkwall made Hawke's stomach turn, about as much as the idea of traveling Ferelden alone. No, she couldn't go back to Kirkwall with Merrill—but she also couldn't keep dragging her across the Ferelden countryside, relying on her misplaced loyalty and foolhardy faith that Hawke had some kind of plan.
"No." Merrill's response was in that way of hers where she seemed surprised to be asked the question at all, because the answer, to her, was so obvious.
"Oh. I thought, maybe…" You regretted coming with me. It was the reasonable reaction.
"My home is wherever you are, Hawke," Merrill said. "I don't need anything else."
Hawke's pony came to a halt, and Hawke just stared at Merrill, color spreading across her face.
"Oh." There was a high breathiness in her voice that sounded unlike her, and the red of Hawke's face darkened. "Oh." Come on, say something! Where was that quick-witted, devil-may-care tongue of hers now? "I, uh…well. That's good to hear, since we may be short of a roof for a while more."
"We'll get through it. Although I wouldn't say no to a bit of sunshine." Merrill frowned up at the uncooperatively gray sky, and Hawke shifted her pony closer to Merrill's. She reached for her partner's hands, and clasped them between hers. The callouses and half-healed cuts on Merrill's hands were as familiar to Hawke as her own, and she cradled them gently between her palms.
"I don't have magic, but, uh…" She lowered her head, water dripping off the ends of her soggy bangs, and breathed repeatedly over Merrill's chilled knuckles, feeling her ears burn. Merrill had a way of making Hawke make an absolute idiot of herself with little more than her mere existence. At least Fenris and Isabela weren't there to laugh (she wished they were).
"Here, my turn." Merrill relieved Hawke of her sad little gesture, and clapped her hands over Hawke's to pulse a small warming spell over their hands.
"Damn. You win." A smile twitched at the corner of Hawke's lips, and Merrill smiled in return as the cold burned away from their hands.
"It's not a contest, Hawke."
"Isn't it?" The hint of a smile spread across Hawke's face, and she looked out at the glistening horizon. "Hey, look at that! Does that look like smoke to you?"
"That looks like smoke to me," Merrill agreed, following Hawke's gaze to the thin, wavering column in the distance. "Maybe it's that inn you were talking about!"
"I will buy you the biggest pie they have," Hawke promised.
"Only if you're going to help me eat it," Merrill replied. "I'd hate for it to go to waste. Oh! Maybe Spots would like some too," she said, rubbing her pony's neck. They immediately started up again, heading towards the smoke while Hawke silently prayed to the Maker with every fiber of her being that it was a damned inn.
"Hawke?" Merrill said after a few minutes, in that way she did before she asked a question, so that Hawke's name itself became a question. "Are you homesick for Kirkwall?" Hawke looked back at Merrill and shook her head.
"Of course not. I've got you, don't I?" She hadn't realized how much the possibility of parting ways with Merrill had been gnawing at her the last few days until it no longer seemed to be an issue. No, she didn't long for Kirkwall (for the past, perhaps, and what had been there), and there was a ragging aching in her chest over Varric's absence, but it wasn't until Merrill was gone from her side that she would feel utterly lost.
A shy smile spread across Merrill's face, and as Hawke faced front to carry on, Merrill spurred her pony forward a few quick steps, so she could lean up and press a kiss to Hawke's face, only bumping her nose a little bit on Hawke's ear.
"Glad that's settled, then."